The Nights of Terror (1981)

The Nights of Terror, originally released in Italy as Le Notti del Terrore and in the U.S. as Burial Ground, is a lower-shelf zombie retread with little to recommend. Virtually everything it offers has been done better elsewhere, including the all-important gore. The shopworn plot borrows the "trapped inside" scenario from Night of the Living Dead (1968), as well as a poorly executed scene of a surprise attack through a window. The notion of an "Etruscan curse" had previously figured in Edward L. Cahn's Curse of the Faceless Man (1958), and Armando Crispino's giallo The Dead Are Alive (1972) featured violent murders in an Etruscan tomb.

Viewers with ADD need not worry about unnecessary exposition. In a brief pre-credit sequence, pudgy, balding, ZZ Top-bearded Professor Ayres uncovers a stone inscription on a plaque in a subterranean tomb conveniently located on the grounds of a castle turned posh country manor. Soon after removing the plaque, the professor is set upon by Etruscan zombies who crawl from the ruins. His plea of "But I am your friend!" fails to dissuade the shuffling stiffs from ripping open the pathetic pedant's throat with the inarticulate teeth of their latex masks.

Above ground, the castle's owners and four houseguests argue, model tacky lingerie, have noisy not-even-softcore sex ("Ooh, oh, OW!"), and flaunt their neuroses as more zombies emerge from beneath the sod. During a garden excursion, two of the couples are attacked by the mummified minions and take cover inside the besieged castle. There they try to repel the wall-climbing, spike-slinging, battering ram-wielding battalion of gut-munching cadavers who, in typical zombie fashion, can only be stopped by a blow to the head. From there, The Nights of Terror alternates narrow escapes with Italian ultra-gore until its lethargic, freeze-frame conclusion. Any potential suspense is squandered, primarily because the living characters are so one-dimensional that viewers won't care whether they escape or not. They're also stupid, standing and gaping at the slow-moving monstrosities rather than hauling ass. Plus, this film features the worst decision in a zombie movie, ever: "Let them come in. Maybe it's something in the house they want, not us!"

Director Andrea Bianchi lazily opts for stale gothic scares (creaky doors opening slowly, whispered names, etc.) and a generous supply of animal offal to serve as human internal organs. The latter are ripped from unconvincing corpses in fond but feeble imitation of George Romero. As in Lucio Fulci's zombie gorefests, such as the marginally superior Zombi II (1979), the rubber faces of the living dead sport wriggling, glued-on worms. While the best of Rosario Prestopino's zombie masks are indeed hideous in appearance, others wouldn't pass muster in a Jaycees' haunted house. Still, the grotesque masks are a welcome switch from the greasepainted ghouls that populate so many other zombie films.

But what sets The Nights of Terror apart from the rest of the undead herd is the bizarre Oedipal relationship between a character named Evelyn (genre stalwart Mariangela Giordano) and her creepy young son Michael, portrayed by Peter Bark (whose Bite is worse, as we learn), a 25-year-old midget with a salad bowl haircut. Possibly the most unconvincing pre-teen ever, Bark's scene in which he attempts to force his hand up his mother's dress provides more shivers than any of the slo-mo attacks of the undead. Their final scene together accounts for the film's notoriety in some circles.

Incest aside, The Nights of Terror is the drab, impotent product of a hack filmmaker aspiring to join the ranks of better-known hacks in a cannibalistic film industry. Producer Gabriele Crisanti had previously overseen several Pasolini "Trilogy of Life" ripoffs as well as Bianchi's Exorcist-inspired Malabimba (1979), and followed up this zombie misfire with several scummy mondo films that arrived decades too late. Indiscriminate gorehounds may enjoy the half-assed dismemberments and disembowelments, but aficionados will find The Nights of Terror more tedious than visiting grandma at Forest Lawn.

Media Blasters/Shriek Show's DVD (also available in Blu-ray) is titled Burial Ground: Nights of Terror to ensure that the film can be found by those who know either title. The screen title is The Nights of Terror, and the print is dubbed in English with no language or subtitle options. Unlike the pan-and-scanned Vestron Video VHS entitled Burial Ground, the screen format is 16:9. Supplements include interviews with Giordano and Crisanti as well as trailers for similar Italian horrors from the Shriek Show catalog.

[This review originally appeared, in different form, in ecco, the world of bizarre video, Volume One, Number One.]